Tiptoes

“I’m not mad, just bewildered,” says Kate Beckinsale about halfway through Tiptoes, a deeply weird cinematic act of little-people advocacy. You might assume she’s talking to the agent who got her the lead in this well-meaning misfire, but the line is actually directed at Matthew McConaughey, who plays her fiancée, who as it turns out is the only Matthew McConaughey-sized person in his extended family, all of whom are otherwise affected by dwarfism. This includes his twin brother, played by Gary Oldman, and if you’re like, “Hey, isn’t Gary Oldman five-eight?” the answer is yes, but the question you should be asking is, “Hey, can Gary Oldman walk on his knees for the duration of a feature film?” and the answer to that is also yes.

I’ll add Oldman’s appearance here to the pile of favors he doled out around this time (I’m thinking of Back to the Future scribe Bob Gale’s overconfident Interstate 60), but how everyone else got talked into Tiptoes is a mystery indeed. Peter Dinklage tries on a French accent as an irascible Marxist; Patricia Arquette is his New Age girlfriend with a violent streak; David Alan Grier—well, yeah, this does seem like the kind of movie David Alan Grier would show up in, ridiculous wig and all.

Maybe the 150-minute director’s cut somehow justifies the script’s innumerable head-scratching decisions and better honors its intentions of humanizing little people, but I can’t say I have any plans to find out.